Al Gore, the guru of global warming, has always behaved like a hypocrite.

One who preaches austerity for everyone else to save the planet, while he jets around the world, living in the lap of luxury, leaving a carbon footprint in his wake that would choke an elephant.

But Gore’s latest carbon caper — selling his struggling Current TV to Al Jazeera for a cool, personal profit of a reported $100 million — takes the cake.

That’s because Al Jazeera, which paid $500 million in total for Current, is funded by the oil and natural gas-rich Arab emirate of Qatar.

The spectacle of Gore selling out to the fossil fuel interests he claims are destroying the planet, even has the normally docile U.S. media on his case.

Gore is now on tour promoting his latest book, The Future — Six Drivers of Global Change, in which he warns that:

“Virtually every news and political commentary program on television is sponsored in part by oil, coal and gas companies — not just during campaign seasons but all the time, year in and year out — with messages designed to soothe and reassure the audience that everything is fine, the global environment is not threatened.”

Juxtaposing that with Gore’s sell-out to these same fossil fuel interests has proven to be too much even for the American media — who have spent years uncritically covering Gore’s save-the-planet crusade.

NBC Today Show host Matt Lauer, after showing Gore his own quote about the influence of fossil fuel interests on the media, asked him whether there wasn’t “a bit of hypocrisy” is his sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera. (A bit of hypocrisy?) MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked Gore how his selling of Current TV to Qatar-backed Al Jazeera would be any different from selling out to an oil giant like Exxon Mobil.

Even liberal guardians of popular culture in the U.S. like comedians Jon Stewart and David Letterman criticized Gore’s inconsistency.

Gore says he understands the concerns, but his responses have been weak, which is what happens when you try to defend the indefensible.

He argues Al Jazeera’s coverage of climate change is the best of any major TV network’s, that Qatar is America’s most loyal Arab ally and that it has visionary plans to promote renewable energy.

Gore, whose personal worth has been estimated by Forbes magazine at over $300 million — richer than Mitt Romney — has also cried poor in defending the sale.

He says while he and partner, Joel Hyatt, were proud of Current TV — boasting it won many awards and always made money — they couldn’t compete as independents against the big American networks.

None of which explains Gore’s hypocrisy in selling Current TV to a media company backed by fossil fuel interests, while simultaneously proclaiming the burning of fossil fuels poses an imminent, existential threat to humanity.

Indeed, Gore — with his high energy consumption lifestyle, multiple luxury homes and never-ending globe-trotting — has become the perfect symbol for all those so-called green elites who talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk, on global warming.

Whether ex-politicians like Gore, or Hollywood celebrities and movie stars, or UN junketeers living high off the public teat, their message is always the same.

It’s that personal restraint and austerity in the name of fighting global warming is always for everyone else, never for them, as they purchase their useless “carbon credits” and absurdly claim this somehow reduces their carbon footprint to zero.

Absurd because the only real way to reduce one’s carbon dioxide emissions is not to emit them in the first place.

Finally, ask yourself this: Judging by his actions and lifestyle, does Al Gore act like a man who truly believes the world is facing an imminent Apocalypse from man-made greenhouse gases? Seriously.